Not much of a director
-
cwente2 — 13 years ago(August 19, 2012 03:44 PM)
It may be worthwhile to remember that Gilbert and DeMille weren't friendly. Leatrice Joy (Mrs. Gilbert) was the locus of the difficulty which involved not only Gilbert's and Joy's careers but their personal lives as well (Gilbert's heavy drinking and its effect on Joy's performances for DeMille he wanted Joy to move out). Can't imagine Gilbert having much good to say about DeMille.
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vinidici — 13 years ago(August 19, 2012 11:36 PM)
I presume you are quoting from "Sacred Profanity: Spiritualism at the Movies." I question the validity of the quote attributed to Gilbert, who died in January of 1936 and long before Hitler was much more than a tiny blip on the American consciousness.
Whatever you do, DO NOT read this sigACKKK!!!
TOO LATE!!! -
vinidici — 13 years ago(August 28, 2012 12:16 AM)
Well, I like Gilbert and feel sorry for him. And didn't his drinking problem get out of hand after the arrival of the talkie era?
As for DeMille, he was a lot of things and I think some of the criticism against him is deserved; but yes, indeed, he WAS a terrific director and, undeniably, one of the true pioneers of the industry. And here's what even his greatest detractors can never gainsay about C. B. DeMille: as both a professional and as a human being, he had the capacity in his heart to provide much-needed work for semi-blacklisted and liberal disidents (like Edward G. Robinson and Vincent Price.)
Whatever you do, DO NOT read this sigACKKK!!!
TOO LATE!!! -
vinidici — 12 years ago(December 23, 2013 07:45 PM)
I still doubt that Gilbert made such a statement. By the time of Gilbert's death, the world was still blissfully unaware of what a monster Hitler really was; and thus; for Gilbert to draw an unflattering comparison between DeMille and Hitler is a bit too big of an anachronism for me to swallow.
Okay folks, show's over, nothing to see here! -
max von meyerling — 12 years ago(December 24, 2013 12:08 AM)
You are a very callow fellow not to understand that even though the Nazi Party did not take power until March 1933, Hitler was topic A all around the world for years. Hitler didn't just become notorious during WW2. He was a spectacle in the newsreels. You fail to understand, and the fact can't penetrate your thick skull, Hitler was already the paragon of evil well before Gilbert died. I don't know where' you're from or where you were taught but your understanding of recent history is non existent.
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cwente2 — 12 years ago(December 24, 2013 06:46 AM)
"Thick skull?" How nasty!
"Spectacle?" yes, but "paragon of evil?" no. Especially in academia, the American left were vocal admirers of both Hitler and Mussolini. They were both socialists. All that stopped rather suddenly, accompanied by a kind of group amnesia, in 1939. (See Thomas Sowell's
Intellectuals and Society
.)
I've explained in an earlier post why Gilbert
may
have said that, and the accusation remains as uncertain as your own
Cliff's Notes
"understanding of recent history" ought to be.
Merry Christmas! -
max von meyerling — 12 years ago(December 24, 2013 08:13 AM)
They say you have the right to your own opinions but not your own facts. I am trying to guess your age and nationality to judge just how far from the actual events they are misunderstood in exactly opposite from the facts. !.
They were not BOTH socialists. When the German General Staff (Ludendorff) were setting up their anti socialist party socialist was a powerful buzz word, so they incorporated it in their title of the German Workers National Socialist Party. They used the word "Socialist" to fool lunkheads into believing that somehow they were pro-working class. Socialism, should you actually look it up in a book, is when the workers control the means of production, fascism is where the means of production control the workers. A common mistake.
But to say that Hitler, at any time, was admired by the American left is a fact that you've just pulled from your ass, unless some very evil person told you this. Leftists all around the world organized themselves into anti-fascist organizations even before Hitler seized power. The McCarthyite witch hunts in Hollywood in the 50s used the charge of "premature anti-fascism". Can you name one American leftist who admired Hitler. Name one and site your source. Because you can't and never can because it didn't happen. Its just something you said, like homosexuals are murderers like that duck guy says. You can say anything at anytime whether it it has any place in reality or not. No American leftist admired Hitler.
Also by Gilbert's death, Hitler had shut down the labor unions, opened concentration camps, banned Jews from every walk of professional life in Germany, seized the Rhineland, rearmed in violation of the Versailles Treaty, murdered the Brown Shirts (fellow fascists but possible contenders for power), and had storm troopers attack and murder Jews in the street.
You know you need to go to your local university and take a course in modern history, or at least read a couple of books (there are so many of them) that don't have cartoon illustrations in them.
I must admit that running into someone so adamantly ignorant and who stands by just absolutely absurd ideas is a source of some fascination. I always speculate as to the number of Americans who think we won the war in Vietnam. I put your absurd foibles in the same class. Really, get yourself educated.
Hitler was considered a monster even before March 1933. Dig it. -
max von meyerling — 12 years ago(December 24, 2013 09:11 AM)
They say you have the right to your own opinions but not your own facts. I am trying to guess your age and nationality to judge just how far from the actual events they are misunderstood in exactly opposite from the facts. !.
They were not BOTH socialists. When the German General Staff (Ludendorff) were setting up their anti socialist party socialist was a powerful buzz word, so they incorporated it in their title of the German Workers National Socialist Party. They used the word "Socialist" to fool lunkheads into believing that somehow they were pro-working class. Socialism, should you actually look it up in a book, is when the workers control the means of production, fascism is where the means of production control the workers. A common mistake.
But to say that Hitler, at any time, was admired by the American left is a fact that you've just pulled from your ass, unless some very evil person told you this. Leftists all around the world organized themselves into anti-fascist organizations even before Hitler seized power. The McCarthyite witch hunts in Hollywood in the 50s used the charge of "premature anti-fascism". Can you name one American leftist who admired Hitler. Name one and site your source. Because you can't and never can because it didn't happen. Its just something you said, like homosexuals are murderers like that duck guy says. You can say anything at anytime whether it it has any place in reality or not. No American leftist admired Hitler.
Also by Gilbert's death, Hitler had shut down the labor unions, opened concentration camps, banned Jews from every walk of professional life in Germany, seized the Rhineland, rearmed in violation of the Versailles Treaty, murdered the Brown Shirts (fellow fascists but possible contenders for power), and had storm troopers attack and murder Jews in the street.
You know you need to go to your local university and take a course in modern history, or at least read a couple of books (there are so many of them) that don't have cartoon illustrations in them.
I must admit that running into someone so adamantly ignorant and who stands by just absolutely absurd ideas is a source of some fascination. I always speculate as to the number of Americans who think we won the war in Vietnam. I put your absurd foibles in the same class. Really, get yourself educated.
Hitler was considered a monster even before 2000March 1933. Dig it. -
cwente2 — 12 years ago(December 24, 2013 12:36 PM)
What an insulting SOB you are. That said, I'll make my response short and sweet:
Sorry, the socialism of Hitler and Mussolini didn't comply with its, or your own, ideal. How did the Soviet Union measure up, or today's Venezuela, or N. Korea? I suppose the Soviet Union and its contemporary counterparts have had no concentration camps, like
good
socialists ought, and their labor unions are flourishing as we speak. And, of course, the Jews had nothing to fear in the Soviet gulags. I think the "common mistake" is yours.
All
dictatorships purport to being "pro-working class". Socialism is, according to Webster, " based on collective or governmental ownership and democratic management of the essential means for the production and distribution of goods." Thus, all dictatorships claim socialism as the sine qua non of their economies and employ its injunctions (with variations, of course). The widest highway yet discovered to controlling the masses. The net result is, and has always been, tyranny of one kind or another. Hitler declared, in
Mein Kampf
, the only differences between Nazism and Soviet communism are cultural.
Your definition of "fascism" is nonsense. Fascism is the most contentious term in use today with which to accurately identify any system of governance (see Golberg's
Liberal Fascism
). Its origins are more clear and come from Mussolini who, in the 20's and 30's, was the most prominent spokesman for socialism in Europe (greatly admired by Woodrow Wilson and the American intellectual class and vice-versa). He remained so to 6 weeks before his death when he declared socialism was the world's future, despite his party's belated expulsion.
"Can you name one American leftist who admired Hitler?"
Margaret Sanger
H.G. Wells
G.B. Shaw
These were philosophical admirers (the Fabian Society, et al) and notorious eugenicists. Lots of sources, including their own writings.
Not necessarily Hitler "admirers", but . . .
Bertrand Russell
Kingsley Martin (influencial editor of
New Statesman
Romain Rolland (recipient of France's Grand Prix de Literature & Nobel Prize)
George Duhamel
Harold Lasky
John Dewey
J.B. Priestley
Anatole France
the French Teacher's unions
Beverley Nichols ("in favor of peace at any price.")
Cyril Joad
Andre Gide
Leonard Woolf
Jane Addams
Garrison Villard
Upton Sinclair
and on and on . . .
. . . who were pacifists, internationalists, and "cosmopolitans" (their term) who insisted on doing
nothing
about Hitler's rhetoric and his re-armament policies (which they refused even to discuss, except to say that he was "entitled") including his invasion of the Rhineland, which, if their council had been ignored, the French army could
easily
have pushed Germany back from this critical industrial region and there would have been no WWII. Hitler, himself, said so.
Hey, meet me at Yale. and let's get ourselves educated
together
!
"It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen."
Oliver Wendell Holmes (another eugenicist, btw)
Best, you arrogant ol' son-of-a-gun! -
cwente2 — 12 years ago(December 27, 2013 11:14 AM)
Quite right. But, they were darlings in American intellectual circles and, often, invitees. Books published and sold here, listened to, quoted, etc. My point rather more broadly made, if you will. Publications of the American intellectual community parroted them and published sympathetic arguments. Sadly, they were listened to by many (generally the Wilson leftovers) in the government here.
It's good to remember it was Hitler's nationalism they objected to, not his socialism (or, state control of the economy), or his authoritarian methodologies. Those listed on my second, longer, list were anti-patriotism generally, loudly offering the opinion that any arms build-up within the Western democracies would lead to
the same
disasterous results as would Hitler's (John Dewey especially, if I remember correctly). They were, as today, motivated by ideology alone and their sense of representing the
only
legitimate governing elite (redistributionists). Their countries of origin were, and are today, of no account to them (internationalists, "cosmopolitans", etc.). -
vinidici — 12 years ago(December 24, 2013 07:14 AM)
Gilbert didn't live to see Nazi Germany attacking and annexing her neighbors and gassing Jews in concentration camps. Even Chaplin himself, a critic and detractor of Hitler during the time when the latter was the darling of American media, American industrialists and, in many quarters, American intellectual circles, was unaware of the full extent of Hitler's abominations until some years after he made and released THE GREAT DICTATOR in 1940.
So I stand by my opinion as I expressed it and I would suggest that you furnish evidence that cannot be refuted before you take to browbeating people as "callow" and (as you strongly implied) ignorant.
Okay folks, show's over, nothing to see here!